{"id":13809,"date":"2011-03-31T16:48:20","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T20:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=13809"},"modified":"2018-12-11T12:48:48","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T17:48:48","slug":"john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/","title":{"rendered":"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW"},"content":{"rendered":"

As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review<\/a> of David Foster Wallace\u2019s posthumous novel, The Pale King\u2014<\/em>a review that is really an essay on Wallace and his peculiar place in American fiction (and nonfiction).<\/p>\n

Of The Pale King<\/em>, Sullivan writes:<\/p>\n

You\u2019d be forgiven for suspecting that a book about random people who work for the government sounds insufferably tedious. The reason it\u2019s not has to do with the word about\u2014it\u2019s the wrong word, the wrong preposition. Wallace doesn\u2019t write about his characters; he hadn\u2019t in a long time. He writes into them. That thing he could do on a tennis court or a cruise ship, or at a porn convention, that made him both an inspiration and a maddening, envy-making presence for the scores like me who learned to do \u201cmagazine writing\u201d\u00a0in his shadow (he was one of those writers who, even when you weren\u2019t sounding like him, made you think about how you weren\u2019t sounding like him)\u2014Wallace liked to do that, in his fiction, with his characters\u2019 interior lives.<\/p>\n

Imagine walking into a place, say a mega-chain copy shop in a strip mall. It\u2019s early morning, and you\u2019re the first customer. You stop under the bright fluorescents and let the doors glide closed behind you, look at the employees in their corporate-blue shirts, mouths open, shuffling around sleepily. You take them in as a unified image, with an impenetrable surface of vague boredom and dissatisfaction that you\u2019re content to be on the outside of, and you set to your task, to your copying or whatever. That\u2019s precisely the moment when Wallace hits pause, that first little turn into inattention, into self-absorption. He reverses back through it, presses play again. Now it\u2019s different. You\u2019re in a room with a bunch of human beings. Each of them, like you, is broken and has healed in some funny way. Each of them, even the shallowest, has a novel inside. Each is loved by God or deserves to be. They all have something to do with you: When you let the membrane of your consciousness become porous, permit osmosis, you know it to be true, we have something to do with one another, are part of a narrative\u2014but what? Wallace needed very badly to know. And he sensed that the modern world was bombarding us with scenarios, like the inside of the copy shop, where it was easy to forget the question altogether. We \u201cfeel lonely in a crowd,\u201d\u00a0he writes in one of his stories, but we \u201cstop not to dwell on what\u2019s brought the crowd into being,\u201d\u00a0with the result that \u201cwe are, always, faces in a crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I love in Wallace, noticed details like that, microdescriptions of feeling states that seem suggestive of whole branching social super-systems, sentences that make me feel like, Anyone who doesn\u2019t get <\/em>that is living in a different world<\/em>. He was the closest thing we had to a recording angel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace\u2019s posthumous novel, The Pale King\u2014a review that is really an essay on Wallace and his peculiar place in American fiction (and nonfiction). Of The Pale King, Sullivan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[154,2075,2074,1577,456,2076],"class_list":["post-13809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-letter-from-the-editor","tag-david-foster-wallace","tag-gq","tag-jj-sullivan","tag-john-jeremiah-sullivan","tag-lorin-stein","tag-the-pale-king"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJohn Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW by Lorin Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"March 31, 2011 \u2013 As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW by Lorin Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"March 31, 2011 \u2013 As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-31T20:48:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-12-11T17:48:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lorin Stein\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lorin Stein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lorin Stein\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ccd66e9829fecb87371ce574d778e34b\"},\"headline\":\"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-03-31T20:48:20+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-12-11T17:48:48+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/\"},\"wordCount\":531,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"David Foster Wallace\",\"GQ\",\"JJ Sullivan\",\"John Jeremiah Sullivan\",\"Lorin Stein\",\"The Pale King\"],\"articleSection\":[\"A Letter from the Editor\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/\",\"name\":\"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW by Lorin Stein\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-03-31T20:48:20+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-12-11T17:48:48+00:00\",\"description\":\"March 31, 2011 \u2013 As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace\u2019s\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ccd66e9829fecb87371ce574d778e34b\",\"name\":\"Lorin Stein\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/336124c76cd6e539d4400e8b6c72da18130705594d9fe99e18f431d949440f1c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/336124c76cd6e539d4400e8b6c72da18130705594d9fe99e18f431d949440f1c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Lorin Stein\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lstein\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW by Lorin Stein","description":"March 31, 2011 \u2013 As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace\u2019s","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW by Lorin Stein","og_description":"March 31, 2011 \u2013 As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace\u2019s","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2011-03-31T20:48:20+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-12-11T17:48:48+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":675,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Lorin Stein","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lorin Stein","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/"},"author":{"name":"Lorin Stein","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ccd66e9829fecb87371ce574d778e34b"},"headline":"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW","datePublished":"2011-03-31T20:48:20+00:00","dateModified":"2018-12-11T17:48:48+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/"},"wordCount":531,"commentCount":2,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"keywords":["David Foster Wallace","GQ","JJ Sullivan","John Jeremiah Sullivan","Lorin Stein","The Pale King"],"articleSection":["A Letter from the Editor"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/","name":"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW by Lorin Stein","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-31T20:48:20+00:00","dateModified":"2018-12-11T17:48:48+00:00","description":"March 31, 2011 \u2013 As readers of the Daily know, we don\u2019t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace\u2019s","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/31\/john-jeremiah-sullivan-on-dfw\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"John Jeremiah Sullivan on DFW"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ccd66e9829fecb87371ce574d778e34b","name":"Lorin Stein","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/336124c76cd6e539d4400e8b6c72da18130705594d9fe99e18f431d949440f1c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/336124c76cd6e539d4400e8b6c72da18130705594d9fe99e18f431d949440f1c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Lorin Stein"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lstein\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13809"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131814,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13809\/revisions\/131814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}